Tech Notes from the Field

A few months back I mentioned we have moved some of our microphone processing from the Aphex Channel to a Symetrix Radius 12×8. I appreciate the patience you all exhibited while I juggled work, site migration, and whatever else life threw at me to finally get this, I should say these, posts rolling. Yes, these, as it will be best to provide you with a 3 or 4 post series on this migration from one manufacturer and technology to another. This first installment will give you the why and how the decision was made. After this comes the technical details and the meat that makes doing these things so much fun. Time to get things started with the “why” and WTF!

A reminder as it has been a while; since Rode purchased Aphex, support for the hardware has been poor, and quality control has gone downhill, too. This is the driving factor for moving on. I had a set of criteria before even looking at alternatives to the Aphex Channel. First a mic processing channel for me MUST have a noise gate, or some expander/gate. I did not want to budge on this one, nor have any demo unit passed this test. The second criteria was the unit required an AES, digital, output. I had to relax this requirement, though the Symetrix does give me an option. More on that in another installment. One must always be willing to compromise when faced with minimal alternatives.

How did I find this unit? Research. Lots of research. As we started to see more power supply failures on the Aphex units, pressure increased to find alternatives. The gate situation was becoming a sticking point. As Symetrix used to make a fine voice processor in the 528E, I poked into their website, here, and found a whole new world of devices. All are DSP based. I downloaded the software, Composer, used to configure these units. I learned a bit more. I contacted my preferred equipment vendor, Broadcasters General Store(name drop), and we started the inquiry process. It was slow to start, but once I was able to chat with a human at Symetrix, the details started to become clear. I was intrigued. Why not DSP? As I was having no luck with stand-alone units, I requested a demo. I originally asked for a Symetrix Prism, but a Radius 12×8 was available, so I went that route.

The hardware is deceptive and intimidating if you are expecting knobs, menus, meters, etc. As the picture shows, the hardware is just that, a chassis with some guts, and the guts need to be told what to do. I am glad I at least poked at the Composer software prior to having the physical unit here. I then had a great conversation with Stu at Symetrix. The chat gave me the necessary areas to focus on and details on what my end goals were. The Radius comes with analog and USB I/O be default, and the flavors are 4×4 and 12×8. I have the 12×8 because I have rooms with 5 to 6 mics. In addition, one can purchase the digital output module and/or a Dante module if you wish to go AoIP. I am considering adding the Dante module to a unit, the why to be discussed in a later installment. The digital output only gives 4 channels, so for a 5 to 6 mic room it is best to stay with analog.

After a few weeks of learning and playing with the Composer software, I had a multi-mic processor in a production studio for real use evaluation. Setting this up does take some learning, and the bottom line is it is a “process”. You start with a site. You add the hardware component, in this case a Radius 12×8. You then create a design which is the guts. I learned about super-modules. I learned the different filters and dynamics that are available. I ignored the items in the toolkit which refer to conferencing, control surfaces, and mixers. Yes, you may say overkill for just a processor, but as you will see in the next installment, the fine tuning and tweaking flexibility does pay off. When all was tested in the production room, I had a concept mic channel with the desired stages ready for on air. I will admit when I purchased our second unit I changed a couple items in the chain which seems to have improved on my original concept. I now have a mic channel strip copied to 8, so each mic is able to be configured individually, and using SymView, I do not need to be connected to Composer for minor tweaks. My DSP channel is basic in terms of the basics: after the input where levels are set, I have the high-pass filter, compressor, de-esser, expander/gate, and EQ as one would expect from a stand-alone processor.

The Symetrix Radius has been on the air now for a few months, and I have received positive feedback. I learned the Radius comes with a better mic pre-amp than the Prism, so that factored into the decision. The unit provides phantom power as I use Neumann BCM-104 microphones. Did it take time to learn? Yes. Is it the same as an Aphex Channel? No. Does it sound clean? Yes. Other factors that were a concern was how well the DSP compressor works, how to deal with make-up gain, and latency through the unit. The former concerns are minor as we know how to make the appropriate adjustments. The latter was a bit more concerning, but once on air, it is not. It depends on how you build your stages and how much DSP is being used. The next installment will describe how I used Composer and built the stages, with screenshots, as an example of what the learning curve involves. I must say I like the flexibility, and DSP can be your friend.